Tonight will be either the eighth or ninth time I’ve seen my beloved Devo perform, having previously caught them at shows at Radio City Music Hall, the Palladium, the Newport Music Hall in Columbus, the Central Park Summerstage, the Hammerstein Ballroom, the McCarren Park Pool in Brooklyn, Irving Plaza and at least one or two others I’m forgetting. I had tix to see them return to Radio City Music Hall in 2021, but that got nixed. As Devo was my first-ever concert in 1981, I’m bringing Oliver, and they will be HIS first-ever concert. We are very much looking forward to it.
Someone recently uploaded the whole show at McCarren Pool from 2008, which was an amazing gig indeed. I ranted about it in real time here. This video omits the very end, however, when Devo tried to come out for an encore (with Booji Boy) and some McCarren Pool goon literally snatched the mic out of Mark’s hand. So much for Brooklyn being laid back.
Here was Jerry’s take on the incident (from this oral history):
Casale: At the end of every Devo show, the band comes out with Mark wearing the Booji Boy mask and we do “Beautiful World.” The sound always comes down and Booji Boy does a faux-Springsteen satire telling long drawn-out stories, but not at McCarren. The pool had a ridiculously early curfew of 10 p.m., but we didn’t think it was a hard and fast rule. Before we started, the mics and the amplification went dead thanks to the long arm of the law. I’m screaming at the sound guys on the side of the stage, the audience is booing and hissing, it’s getting ugly. Two security guards walk out on the stage and tell Booji Boy he’s got to go. In his high-pitched voice he’s saying, “I just want to talk to them,” and the guards grab him by the arms and walk him off the stage. We thought, “We’re the headliners, they have to let us finish our set.” We couldn’t believe it. All those radiation suits and energy domes became sad clown outfits.
A then-derelict giant swimming pool. I remember dutifully rockin’ out at this show in a pair of battered ol’ Chuck Taylors. After two hours of boucin’ up and down on the pool’s unrelenting, cracked concrete floor, I could barely walk.
A few years later, McCarren Pool stopped hosting live music and was converted back into a public pool in 2012, something of a death knell for that era of Williamsburg's character.
Six years after this performance, original Devo member Bob "Bob 2" Casale passed away, the second original member to die after drummer Alan "Human Metronome" Myers in 2013. Today, the surviving members -- Mark Mothersbaugh, Jerry Casale and Bob "Bob 1" Mothersbaugh -- are flanked by longtime drummer Josh Freese -- who has played with everyone from A Perfect Circle and Guns N' Roses through Weezer, The Vandals and Nine Inch Nails -- and guitarist Josh Hager, formerly of The Rentals and ShadowParty.
Crank it.
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